For several months now there's been a huge hullabaloo about Peter Beinart, who has gone from establishment Jewish-American golden boy to near-pariah figure for his book, The Crisis of Zionism, which essentially appears to be of the anguished "Israel-is-losing-its-soul" variety but is nonetheless important because it's an insider's rebellion and has ruffled feathers. I think I'll pass reading it, however, not just because much this Jewish-American intramural debate is old news and not particularly interesting anymore (Israelis themselves have had a much more vigorous debate for years, after all.)

It's that the book appears to carry some bizarre arguments. From historian Shaul Magid's review in Religion Dispatches:

While Beinart gestures to his leftist critics that he is aware of the argument that one cannot separate the settlements from the state, he never responds to them. Probably because he can’t. His suggestion that we should boycott the settlements and give that money (and more!) to the state belies the reality that the state funds the settlements, which is why no one I am familiar with ever suggested boycotting the Afrikaner farmers while giving more aid to the South African government.

If Beinart tries to establish some kind of separation between the settlements and the state of Israel, which finances them, provides infrastructure, guards them, builds roads to them, etc. — how is anyone supposed to take him seriously?

Issandr El Amrani is a Cairo-based writer and consultant. His reporting and commentary on the Middle East and North Africa has appeared in The Economist, London Review of Books, Financial Times, The National, The Guardian, Time and other publications. He also publishes one of the longest-running blog in the region, www.arabist.net.